虹麋鹿 0 Report post Posted December 2, 2019 Heya! Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but I'm writing an essay in Mandarin (my Extended Essay for the IB Diploma Program) about the simplification of Chinese characters and reforms of the writing system, first and second simplification schemes and may touch on the Qin one with reunification and stuff. If anyone happens to know good places to look for scholarly resources like books or essays even tangentially related to the topic, I'd really appreciate it since I'm an American high school student and don't really have access to Chinese databases. Apologies again if this is the wrong place, and thanks for any responses, 虹麋鹿 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
889 1,751 Report post Posted December 2, 2019 My recollection is that John DeFrancis discussed writing reform in some of his works. Of course they're in English, but I'm sure his notes and bibliography will lead you to some Chinese sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_DeFrancis This paper by DeFrancis would probably make a good start: http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
虹麋鹿 0 Report post Posted December 2, 2019 Thanks a ton, I'll check it out! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mungouk 989 Report post Posted December 2, 2019 https://scholar.google.com/ will search for academic books and papers, including in Chinese. The results will tell you how many other papers cite each result, so you can judge which of the results are the most important. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters has some references at the end in Chinese, which could be good starting points. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OneEye 1,382 Report post Posted December 3, 2019 A short, but very good and interesting read, is 杜忠誥《漢字沿革之研究:從情、法、理的角度看兩岸簡、繁體字》. Prof. Tu is a renowned calligrapher and paleographer. He's Taiwanese, but stays impartial and the book actually won some kind of award or honor in China. Two books we consult pretty often on the simplification of individual characters are 邵鴻、邵冠勇著《简化汉字解说》 and 江藍生《簡化字繁體字對照字典》. Their analyses sometimes need to be taken with a grain of salt, but overall they're decent resources. 1 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites